


Tell Me Secrets Only Trouble Knows

by chookiecat



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Extra Warning For Character Death, Faint season 3 spoilers, Fixing the trope, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mates, Pain draining, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-16
Updated: 2013-07-16
Packaged: 2017-12-20 09:31:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/885691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chookiecat/pseuds/chookiecat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone has been hurt, and Stiles is sure that a cover up job that puts that look on Scott’s face is going to take hours.</p>
<p>But then Scott’s hand is on his chest, and everything snaps back into focus. He hadn’t realised he couldn’t hear anything until Scott shouted his name, or had suddenly ended up on his back until he was staring at the sky, or that there was a gaping wound in his front, until he could feel it.</p>
<p>And oh <i>shit</i> the pain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tell Me Secrets Only Trouble Knows

“Shit!” Stiles groans as something collides with his lungs.

Maybe he could have come up with something more eloquent, but very quickly he’s been forced to slow down, to stop running altogether, actually. He’s beginning to regret taking that short cut through the clearing, but Derek had howled, and Scott had taken off straight after him. Everything for a second goes very hazy, and he’s on his knees without knowing how he got there.

Scott is back – shit, when did that happen, with a look on his face that promises a lot of paperwork for the Sherriff. Someone has been super badly, hurt, and Stiles is sure that a cover up job that puts that look on Scott’s face is going to take hours.

But then Scott’s hand is on his chest, and everything snaps back into focus. He hadn’t realised he couldn’t hear anything until Scott shouted his name, or had suddenly ended up on his back until he was staring at the sky, or that there was a gaping wound in his front, until he could feel it.

And oh _shit_ the pain.

“Stiles!”

Stiles is just coming to the realisation that it’s _him_ that has been hurt, which might be a nice change from having to do clean up, if it didn’t hurt like barbed wire through his chest.

“Shit,” Stiles says again, and Scott almost cracks a smile, because of all the words that Stiles has in his arsenal, it’s nice to know that good ol’ profanities never go out of style when one is bleeding all over a new hoodie.

“You with me, buddy?” Scott asks, pressing down on Stiles’ chest, which he now understands must be bleeding pretty badly.

“Yeah,” Stiles says, a fraction out of breath. “I think so. Stop pushing so hard, man. Gonna make it worse.”

Scott is fumbling around at his back, in panic, and muttering under his breath about exit wounds.

“Did I get… did I get _shot_?” Stiles asks incredulously, and he wants to look down to see the evidence, but Scott pushes his head to the side.

“Sit still, jeez Stiles. Trust you to fidget even when you’ve taken fire.”

Isaac chooses that moment to stumble through the clearing.

“He’s going to be fine!” Isaac says, and Stiles is glad, because Isaac has the best sense of smell, and if he thinks Stiles is fine, he damn well is sure going to be. He goes to heave a sigh of relief, but can’t quite muster the breath for it.

But then he is glad he didn’t celebrate too soon, because he remembers that Isaac had been posted above Derek (who had been waiting in a far too deep canyon), and would have been with him when he had screeched that terrifying pained howl across the forest.

Stiles, for some reason, finds a little more comfort in that knowledge, anyway. Derek is fine.

“He find him?” Scott asks. Stiles is lost for a moment – memories a little hazy, a little fuzzy, and it’s kind of nice to not have all of the attention on him for a second, because this breathing thing has started to get really difficult, and getting that sorted is kind of his number one priority. It may even come before stopping that _horrible_ pain that is slowly spreading.

“Yes,” Isaac says, dropping to his knees at the other side of Scott. “Had him by the throat at last I saw. How you doin’, Stiles?” Isaac runs a hand through his hair, and it's nice, like being petted.

“Super,” Stiles grins. Isaac is not worried, no need for him to.

“I can’t smell anything lethal. I think you’ll be okay,” Isaac says, continuing to pet him.

Scott frowns at that.

“Does it not smell lethal, or does it not smell like…” Scott asks, and Isaac takes a quick inhale through his nose, and furrows a brow.

“Nothing. Just… nothing…” Issac says, and he, too, rubs too large hands across Stiles’ back. “I can’t… there isn’t… Both?”

“Isaac,” Stiles says. “You pet nice, but make full sentences. I’m a bit hazy.”

“I – I…” Isaac doesn’t seem able to form Stiles’ requested sentence. He just looks at Scott, suddenly a mirror of his panicked expression. Stiles seizes the hand on his chest – he doesn’t care who it belongs to, but it turns out to be Scott – and demands an answer.

“Someone!” he grunts. “Words!”

“I… There’s no exit wound, Stiles,” Scott says. “You still have a bullet in your lung.”

“That’s a good thing, right? Just the one extra hole?” Stiles grits. Shit, that pain just got worse again.

“No, Stiles, it isn’t,” Cora’s voice sounds, and she approaches from the edge of the clearing.

“There’s a girl,” Stiles smiles fondly. He has a lot of time for Cora.

“Stiles, there’s something else,” Scott says, trying to get back his attention, but Cora has approached, and she has knelt at his head, and oh, lifting his head to her lap. That’s pleasant.

_Oh, Cora, what’s wrong?_ he tries to ask, but the words are a bit hard to form at the moment, so he takes his hand, and raises it to her face, which is upside down to him, and catches a stray tear on her cheek. She seizes his hand.

“The bullet is clean,” Scott says, and that sounds like a good thing, too. “There’s no wolfsbane in it. It… there’s no use firing it at one of us. That bullet was meant for someone human.”

“Well, waste not,” Stiles says softly, and Cora rubs gently down his arm, a terrible sad look on her beautiful face.

Stiles refocuses on Scott. It’s hard, because he’s starting to lose a bit of feeling, and the pain is fighting for his attention.

There is a lot of pain. More than he ever remembers about pain. It fights him for control, for consciousness. He sees something he’s seen before behind Scott’s eyes, and he suddenly has knowledge he didn’t have before.

“Scotty?” Stiles asks. Scott seems to understand, of course, as he always has with Stiles, that there is a lot of meaning behind that question.

“Stiles,” Scott says softly, and there is a lot of meaning behind that, too.

“This it, buddy?” Stiles asks carefully. There are a lot of sad faces around, and he can feel at the edges of his vision Jackson has joined Isaac, and a silent Jackson is nothing new these days, but it doesn’t bode good news, either. The pain is getting much harder to ignore, now. No one seems to be pushing for bandages, or for stretchers, or car keys. Scott is holding an extra warm hand at a gun shot wound in his chest and Stiles thinks he might have see this in a movie or two before.

Scott has no response to this for a little too long. He shakes his head.

“We can… we can try and move you?” he offers. “The jeep might be a ten minute run away?”

“Would I get there in time?” Stiles asks, and Cora grabs at his face with a hand that is too wet from tears she has been fighting.

“No, Stiles.” Jackson has been trying to be an omen of good news, but no one else seems to have the mercy to say it out loud, and Stiles is glad that Jackson did. Glad that he could hear it, at least. “The run alone would be too much stress.”

“Oh,” he says, and then something is important again. It doesn’t overshadow the pain, but it damn well complements it.

“Where’s-“ he looks up. Someone has to know.

“Coming,” Cora says. Scratching human fingernails carefully over soft spots. “He’s coming.”

“Good.” He tries to nod. “Scotty,” Stiles says. “It… it hurts a lot.”

Oh, there’s a cough, and oh shit that hurts like a bitch. He risks a look.

He should not have risked it. His entire front section is a foreboding crimson, Scott’s hand lost in a sea of blood. For some reason, Stiles can only grasp insignificant details about it, like the missing drawstring from his hoody, Scott’s broken fingernail.

“My dad!” he protests when something important finally flits through his mind. “Will you-“

“Yes,” Scott promises. “I swear.”

“Don’t tell him why. He doesn’t need…”

“We’ll tell him the truth,” Cora says, entwining her fingers with Isaac’s at Stiles’ shoulder. “You are a hero.”

“’Mnot,” Stiles grunts. “Weak human gunshot.”

Jackson snorts. “No, man. This is an assassination. They had super-special Stiles bullets. Ones only ever meant for you.”  
Stiles thinks that makes him sound a little more badass than he has been.

Isaac, pretty Isaac is too pretty to be sad, but stares at Stiles like his heart is breaking.

“Too vital to the operation. What are we without Stiles?”

Stiles understands that these are things that would never normally be said. Things they know too well that you don’t always get to say. He knows if Boyd were here, he’d say something about his piss-poor double-clutching, and if Lydia were here, she’d have thanked him, and if Erica were here, she’d have called him Batman. The people in the clearing know you don’t always get to say it, and they were glad when they got time when it was Danny.

“I’m sorry I – “ Stiles tries. “Everything. It all.”

Scott shakes his head roughly, trying to quell something behind his own eyes. “No. Don’t. That’s not on you. It never was.”

“I’m still sorry,” Stiles says softly, and grasps Scott’s hand carefully.

 

And then there is an almighty crash.

 

“Thank _god_ ,” Cora sags visibly, and Isaac cracks a sad, sad smile. Jackson helps him shift out of the way, and suddenly there is an assault on his senses.

“Derek,” Stiles breathes

Derek is finally there, dripping in blood himself. His hands are torn up from scrambling up a cliff face, his face drenched in the blood of any enemy that just didn’t seem important at that very moment. Slow-healing claw marks litter his chest, taking just a little longer to heal, and he looks absolutely terrified.

He’s the best thing Stiles has ever seen.

“Stiles,” is Derek’s only response, his eyes unable to contain their raw power, red pupils raking him in.

“Derek,” he says again, mostly because he’s been waiting, and Derek should know it’s been inconvenient. And painful. “You wanna do something about all this?” he gestures to the wound. And Derek is the only one who has ever been able to make this work on a human, and only ever on Stiles, who is grateful for it.

He moves Scott’s hand over, taking the pressure duty from him, and presses fingers with gentleness Stiles has only recently come to associate with Derek, and closes his eyes.

Stiles feels the release of tension before he sees the streams of black running up Derek’s wrists. He feels the all too familiar stench of acrid smoke wafting over a sixteen year old boy, of the darkness of Derek’s hate for himself, and the flashes into Derek’s mind as he melds their bodies, sharing his life force, his healing, his abilities.

Stiles lets out a moan, because thank god, and Derek leans forward, as though he is in pain, to press his nose at Stiles’ throat.

“Ah,” Derek breathes into his pulse point. _“Shit.”_

“That’s what I keep saying,” Stiles says. Derek continues leaking pain from his body. Another low moan escapes. “Oh my god, man, better than crack.”

Stiles feels at the edges of Derek’s senses, the pack start to slip away. They fade into the trees, and he catches a last look into Scott’s eyes, sharing the stories of ten years of shenanigans. Scott allows himself one final puppy dog grin, and leaves the clearing.

“Derek,” Stiles says softly. Derek is still poised with his face at the crook of Stiles’ neck, but Stiles is only cradled by Derek, now. The clearing is empty but for them.

Stiles is finally able to focus on something that isn’t pain. He raises an arm – he’s been jostled a lot in the past few minutes, and places a hand at Derek’s throat. It’s his ultimate weak spot, and Stiles has seen Derek throw himself at people for much less, but he just hisses, the sound of someone with aching bones stepping into a warm pool – like good pain you’ve been waiting for, pain you didn’t know you needed until you were immersed in it.

“I wanted to feel it. Your pulse,” Stiles says softly, and they both know that’s total crap, because he can feel everything from Derek while he drains his pain, and this is very different. It stands for something more than a vulnerable pulse point. “Should I-” he asks, and Derek grabs at his hand, keeping it steady on his rapid-fire heart rate.

“No. Stay. Please stay.” Derek doesn’t really ever say please, and he only sort of whispers it into his skin this time.

“I can’t – Scott said - ” Stiles tries, and even though the pain is much less, he won’t give it all to Derek, who has known enough pain – more than anyone should have to stand. Stiles mostly just wants to get rid of a little of it, so he can stay just a little longer, so with a heavily present knowledge of pain, there’s still a definite heave to his lungs.

“No,” Derek says, pushing a little harder into the wound.

“Easy,” Stiles tries to soothe. “It’s okay.”

“No!” Derek says again, drawing himself out of the most potent source of Eu De Stiles to meet his eyes. “It’s not enough. There isn’t enough time.”

“It’s what we’ve got,” Stiles says, and suddenly, there is something very important to say. There is something that he’s never had the courage to say before, and now he maybe regrets waiting a little, and oh god, he had never wanted to die with regret.

He gently rubs at Derek’s throat, trying to convey it all – everything that had always been a maybe. He tries to say it all – everything he has felt, everything he has always wanted, but he is very quickly running short on breath. He tries to show what it is that he means, and why he waited.

“You know, right?” Stiles asks.

“Of course,” Derek says, leaning forward to press his forehead to Stiles’. “I’ve always known. I just never knew how to.”

Stiles tries to laugh, but it turns into a cough, which, horribly, morbidly – oh God this never happens in the films – splatters blood over Derek’s face.

“That’s it? Why you didn’t? We’d have figured it out, doofus.”

Derek shakes his head softly, and Stiles feels traitorous tears leaking from his eye, mostly, but he is man enough to admit not completely, from pain.

“No. I’m not… How, without help?”

“The internet is full of videos and guides,” Stiles tries to smile, and Derek almost tries to match it.

“No,” he says again, because he’s contrary as fuck. “Are we having different conversations? _You_ know, right?”

Yes. Yes they had been talking about different things, and it takes Stiles a second because the pain has moved back to ‘ _shit_ ’, but almost like a gust of wind, he hits Derek’s page. And it hits Stiles that he _does_ know. He might have known all along, as well.

He brings his other hand up to Derek’s cheek. This moment feels heavy with what could now never be.

“Yours,” Stiles breathes, suddenly brimming with almost-fresh knowledge.

Derek lets out a sound that is not entirely human, and sets Stiles’ bones on edge, as he leans in to claim the single kiss that they would be allowed to share. There should have been hundreds of thousands, over a lifetime, but there was only a little time left.

“Yours,” Derek says in kind. “You know. You have to know. I can’t believe I never-”

“It’s fine,” Stiles breathes. Another cough. He can feel blood on his teeth, in the back of his throat. He knows his breathing is wet. He knows a lot of things, in this moment. “It’s okay. I know now.”

“It’s not enough,” Derek says again, and Stiles wants to respond, he honestly does.

He can’t – breathing is a true effort, and words feel like fire. He forms them for Derek, but he’ll never have enough words for what this is, or what it should have been. Not with a thousand lifetimes lived, not with every language on the earth. He’ll never have enough – it could never have been enough, not with Derek. They were always going to need more.

So Stiles turns away from words, and he tries to give Derek the other parts of what should have been – every New Years, and Christmas and Thanksgiving. Every night, with the weighted words heavy between them. Every morning, laden with morning breath. In the darkness of something that hits to close to home with entwined fingers. In hospital beds when fragility gets in the way. In a suit, with a cake and an open bar, with platinum on fingers that should never need to part. In the doorways of sleeping children, and in crowds with onlookers to a violin recital.

And he feels that Derek sends him a lifetime of stolen moments, of rash decisions, of the worst kind of fights, and the best kind of makeups. He shares the rebuilding of a man who has known too much loss. He shares the pain of what is to come, and Stiles is happy to bear the weight of decisions he’ll never see made. Somewhere, Stiles has knowledge of giving speeches and making jokes. He feels himself making lunch as a hand snakes around his waist, stubble at his cheek as a nose bumps his own. He feels the tassel on his graduation cap hit the winning side of his face as a sunset beats down on them. He feels that routine never has to slip into monotony, and that there is always surprise, and always joy. He feels sand between his toes, and salt water on his face. He has knowledge of a tattoo bearing weight over him that non-supernatural ones do not. Finally, there is the ghost of the hundreds of thousands of kisses they deserved.

There should have been so much.

Derek drags a breath, and Stiles wishes he were able to. A few moments is all it takes.

They say your life flashes before your eyes when you die, and Stiles had always assumed that meant what you had already lived.

Stiles and Derek share their life, and Stiles sees it all in vivid technicolour, as reality slips to grey at the edges of his vision.

There are a scant few heartbeats left, and Derek whispers the heaviest secret into them, and Stiles allows his most natural expression to fall to his face – the ghost of a knowledgeable smile – and then that’s it.

There is not enough time, but there was never going to be enough. Isn’t that the way, when it comes to these things?

Derek kneels in the clearing, allowing himself a few more moments in the lifetime with Stiles, before the wind carries a life away, along with the whispered promise.

_“You are my destiny.”_

**Author's Note:**

> The trope is ‘mate’, but as an Australian, the word makes me a little uncomfortable, and as someone who has a terminal case of found family, “I love you” (which Stiles originally thinks) doesn’t carry enough weight. To me, Derek and Stiles are more than that. 
> 
> The title is from the Mikky Ekko song "Pull Me Down"
> 
> Currently hoping someone would like to beta this.
> 
> I am adding extra WARNINGS for Major Character Death.


End file.
